Talks on Trump Tower in Moscow active during 2016 election

“I would say Michael Cohen would have a much better recollection of it than the president,” Giuliani added. “It was much more important to him. That was his sole mission. The president was running for president of the United States. So you have to expect there’s not going to be a great deal of concentration on a project that never went anywhere.”

Also appearing on “Meet the Press,” Virginia Democratic Senator Mark Warner said that the idea that negotiations could have continued into November was “big news.”

“That is news to me, and that is big news. Why, two years after the fact, are we just learning this fact now when there’s been this much inquiry?” Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked.

“I would think most voters — Democrat, Republican, independent, you name it — that knowing that the Republican nominee was actively trying to do business in Moscow, that the Republican nominee at least at one point had offered, if he built this building, Vladimir Putin, a free-penthouse apartment, and if those negotiations were ongoing up until the election, I think that’s a relevant fact for voters to know. And I think it’s remarkable we are two years after the fact and just discovering it today.”

The Moscow tower project is part of investigations by the special counsel and lawmakers into links between Trump’s campaign and Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Cohen has said he lied about the length of his involvement in the process in order to be consistent with Trump’s own public pronouncements that he wasn’t involved in business dealings with Russia.